“Is he dead, though?” Penny asked. “Did you see him die? Or is this like one of those overly dramatic shows on the CW? Where you think somebody died but they really survived and are coming to bust us out of here?”
I smiled at the thought, and even though my heart worried desperately that he didn’t survive, I loved Penny for trying to rouse my spirits.
I was about to say something to that effect when the door opened again and I heard somebody coming in. I jumped up and looked through the bars of the cell, watching the shadowy figure stride towards me.
“Everly, my dear,” Miles Thackeray said jovially, like we were old friends. He was dressed in a black suit that was tailored to his body, and looked as if he was heading to a day at the racetrack, not coming to visit prisoners of the Organization.
He stopped in front of my door, gave me a quick nod, and said, “You’re looking… well.”
“Fuck you,” I said, glaring at him.
“I’ll forgive you your vulgar language. I imagine this is quite a shock for you. Realizing that the Organization is quite serious about all of this. That we’re not joking or messing about like you and your teenage friends.”
I didn’t reply. I simply continued to glare at him, imagining his head exploding or the Kings bursting through the door to shoot him dead.
“I suggest you get used to this, though. This is your new world, your new life. You will have to adjust or you will die faster than you expect.”
“Everly? Who’s here?” Penny asked from down the hall.
“Just the man who is going to hurt you, Penny, my dear, if your friend doesn’t fall into line,” Thackeray said with a smirk. “If we are forced to harm you, remember who made us do it.”
“Fuck you,” Penny said down the hall. “Fuck all of you. What you’re doing is fucked up, so fuck you.”
It was my turn to smirk. I locked my eyes on him and raised an eyebrow.
“I guess we’re tougher on our side of town than the girls you’re used to,” I said. “We don’t break, we don’t bend. We wait until we have a chance to fight back, and then we fight ten times harder than anyone expects.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Thackeray said with his greasy, smug smile. But I noticed the smallest tightening around the edges of his eyes that gave away his annoyance. He didn’t like girls like me or Penny. Girls who stood up to men like him. “We like it when you fight. It means we get more pleasure breaking you down.”
And as much as I wanted to stand up to him, he got me with that. He was holding all the power in this situation, and he knew it. Even if I could irritate him like a grain of sand in his eye, all it would take was for him to wipe his hand and sweep me away. He could make my life fall apart with the twitch of a finger or a swipe on his phone screen.
And still, I stood up to him and looked him dead in the face. I stared him down and let him feel the full heat of my simmering rage.
I couldn’t understand why he didn’t lose the smirk or back away, though. He stared back, just as intently, and then glanced at the door when it opened again.
Two guards walked in with a body between them, dragging the feet on the floor behind them both.
I saw a shock of bright blue hair and the flash of a facial piercing as the figure’s head lolled to one side.
“Ryker!” I screamed and gripped the bars with my hands. “Ryker! Wake up!”
“He’ll wake in a few hours,” Thackeray said with an evil grin that replaced the smirk. “He’ll feel like he was hit by a freight train after the beating my men gave him, but he’s alive. For now.”
“Why did you bring him here?” I demanded. “Why is he here, too?”
“All the better to break you with,” Thackeray said with a maniacal gleam in his eyes. “I needed another nobody who could disappear, like you, my dear.”
As I choked back my sobs, gripping the bars on my door, I watched them drag Ryker past me. His face was swollen and peppered with bruises, and his clothes were torn and covered with blood.
They put him in a cell on the same side of me, a couple of doors down. Thackeray supervised, had the masked guards lock his room, and flashed me that horrible smirk as they passed by. I stayed held onto the bars in my door until they were gone. And only after I heard the door at the end of the hall slam shut, I walked to the bed and sat down.
And let my face fall into my hands as the tears came and washed away any sense of freedom I had left clinging to my soul.
I was caught, I was scared, and I was in way over my head.
CHAPTER3
“Get up!”the voice said. It was a man’s voice, deep and harsh and with no hint of softness in it. “I fucking said get up!”